So I've been playing this recently...

[Spartacus]

I think G Generation Overworld is the only Gundam game that features Gundam Geminass and that's become my favorite entry.

The G Gen and SRW games has similarity with GO in that the most fun aspect of the game is watching the cool animations.

[Rue]

Whoops, I was actually playing Overworld & not World...its the one that's fully translated. Been a while though, I really should get back to it.

I think G Generation Overworld is the only Gundam game that features Gundam Geminass and that's become my favorite entry.

The G Gen and SRW games has similarity with GO in that the most fun aspect of the game is watching the cool animations.

You should play SD Gundam G Generation-F then, the multi-disk version from the good ol' Playstation. Its probably the one that started my love for the GGeneration series.

You can actually play obscure ones like NEW MOBILE REPORT GUNDAM W G-UNIT as one of its scenarios, meaning that each Series is its own set of stages & is actually a decent "summary" of each alteration plot & events that you can play part in.

Its basically how I've learned a lot of the other Gundam series' stories/characters w/o actually watching a lot of them.

[Skull]

Currently playing through boyband roadtrip simulator er I mean Final Fantasy XV.

It's a whole lotta fun driving 'round hunting beasts and doing quests. The world is gorgeous and all of the characters are interesting even the bit characters.

[34]

Just finished the latest chapter of Sdorica Sunset. The game's pretty good, interesting mechanics, fun story, and especially cool characters. But most importantly the grinding session does not make me want to kill myself.

[Imperial]

I beat Dark Souls 3 and both pieces of DLC last week. It inspired me to go out and buy the Dark Souls Trilogy and start from the very beginning. I'm still in the early going, having just killed the Taurus Demon. The culture shock of going from DS3 to the original is still throwing men off a bit. I'm not used to being this slow.

But when I'm not on the Dark Souls hype train, I'm making my way through Nier: Automata. I almost quit in the early going when I kept getting turned around in the city ruins (yes, even with a map; my sense of direction is that bad). Thankfully, I started getting the hang of finding my way around, learning the combat system and discovering how powerful Chips and Pod abilities can be. I'm zooming through the game and should be done with B2's route (I mildly spoiled myself on there being multiple paths) in the next day or two. Then I'll probably marathon through the second route over the weekend. This game is really sucking me in and getting me invested in these characters. I would also like to single out Nier: Automata for the best video game soundtrack I have heard in years.

[Five_X]

NIER

Yeah the music is great, I genuinely listen to it all the time, even imported it into roll20 so I can use it as the soundtrack for my games.

[Spartacus]

I feel like a total monster for not invested to Automata's characters.

[Mattias]

Got to the 'Oh Shit' moment in Spiderman. I've got to say, even if the guy was telegraphed as the villain from a mile away, it's refreshing that after his first public act, all the main characters are like "yeah, that's him". No dithering about how it doesn't line up with his personality or maybe it was someone else. Just "let's go beat the shit out of the suicide bomber and figure out motives later".


Or maybe I've just been so deep in anime recently that sane responses are taking me by surprise.

[Historia]

I can run Fallout 4 since I bought it back in 2015. From barely able on low to seamlessly on Ultra with 130+ mods, but, even great graphics can't save its shit story.

That said the new Overwatch heroine looks neat for a rich girl with no parental guidance. Kind of.

... I've lost hope in them ever expanding the lore.

- - - Updated - - -

The culture shock of going from DS3 to the original is still throwing men off a bit. I'm not used to being this slow.

Wait till you play Demon's Souls. I rate it above Dark Souls 1 & 2.

[eddyak]

I think the entire point of Overwatch is to leave as much vague as possible for fan speculation and expansion by their writers.

[Historia]

I think the entire point of Overwatch is to leave as much vague as possible for fan speculation and expansion by their writers.

... what writers.

[Deathhappens]

I made the mistake of reinstalling Stellaris due to the new upcoming DLC. Seven hours later...

[Mattias]

I think the entire point of Overwatch is to leave as much vague as possible for fan speculation and expansion by their writers the porn makers.

FTFY

[pinetree]

I'm probably already late to the party but I just finished DELTARUNE yesterday and was both absolutely impressed and incredibly underwhelmed. Anyone else here play it? How did you feel about it?

[Skull]

So I finally managed to finish the main story of FFXV as well as the party member's DLC episodes. After mulling it over for a few days, I have a final verdict.

Starting with the gameplay, it was literally a game of two halves. The first half of the game with the whole open world was immensely fun. The fact that pretty much every line of dialogue is voiced meant that even doing repetitive fetch quests wasn't boring thanks to the witty dialogue - both from the NPCs and the party members snarking at each other. That said, it is terribly easy to become over-leveled due to the side-quests giving you so much XP as well as the fact that 99% of them are in the first half of the game and so bosses - even the final boss can become ridiculously easy as a result. The various alternate activities such as fishing and Chocobo racing are surprisingly addictive despite how basic most of them are.

Then after a certain point the open world closes off and the game becomes hyper serious in making you focus on the story as it forces you through dungeon after dungeon with the occasional set-piece to try and break it up. It's not bad but it does lack the replayability as well as a bit of an odd choice to frame the game in such a two-tone manner. Overall it was definitely one of my favourite FF games to play in terms of gameplay despite its flaws, while the story I was more mixed on...

Story Discussion

The story is quite a tricky beast to unpack, given the game's long and troubled production history. Some of which were poor business decisions on Square's part but some were genuinely out of their control such as originally planned villain Emperor Aldercapt's voice actor dying partway through leading to them having to re-write the script once again to have Ardyn be the final villain instead. It's not me excusing the flaws, just being sympathetic that problems occur in the creative process.

Anyways, onto the story itself. First and foremost, I really like the world of Eos - the history, the cosmology and even the geography are cool to examine. Even if a lot of it is simply carried over from the other Fabula Nova Crystallis saga but it still manages to stand on its own.

The plot is a solid Hamlet archtype of "Evil Emperor takes the throne from a rightful prince who must go on a journey to reclaim it, learning lessons along the way that will shape him into a more just ruler than had he simply ascended the throne without any trials." There wasn't too many things in the plot that actually surprised me other than the obvious character shafting of certain antagonists due to production issues but more on that later.

The characters are the heart of the game and really carry it through the many hours you spend playing. The brotherhood between the four leading boys feels very natural and thanks to their Character Episodes they were fleshed out individually which sucks that said Episodes were locked behind DLC and really should have been in the base game. That said, Prompto's backstory of being a cloned Magitek Soldier felt very tacked on with very little foreshadowing. Not bad, just very out of left field. The supporting cast are fine and likeable but they all but disappear after the halfway point which is a massive shame - Cor Leonis in particular felt wasted but thankfully he's given much needed spotlight in the Gladio DLC. And now we reach the antagonists, how much you like Ardyn determines how much you'll like the second half of the game as he really has to carry it since all the other villains (Ravus, Drautos and the Emperor) really all got the shaft. Which is a massive shame really.

That said, in a weird sorta way I am glad Ardyn got to be the main villain after the multiple re-writes as he's ultimately the most interesting character by the end of it all. He's Noctis but if things went very wrong and got completely screwed over by both his brother and the Gods. While initially coming off as an insane jester a la Kefka, there's so much more depth to him as a man who saved humanity by taking all of the daemons into himself only to be cast out as a daemon by humanity and now immortal he wanders the land plotting his revenge. If you look at the mural of Noct's ancestors just before the final boss, he'll actually point out that there's a suspicious gap where Ardyn should've been. Hopefully the Ardyn DLC will expand on his character and close off the saga in a satisfactory way since all the other DLC episodes have been cancelled.

To sum up the story, it was a very flawed execution but it was still overall enjoyable. It rather reminded me of a fanmade TM Servant sheet where you can see they've got a good concept but they just can't explain it as well as it exists in their head.

As an aside, I was going to go into nerdy comparison's to every reference and parallel to previous Final Fantasy games but I figured that if anyone cared then they'd already know so I didn't bother.

I decided to wait until the (final) Ardyn DLC episode to 100% the game as to avoid getting oversaturated with the game over so many months as I was feeling the burn by the time I finished the main story.

[pinetree]

Didn't they cancel all the upcoming DLCs for that?

[Skull]

Only the ones which they hadn't started working on which was Aranea's, Luna's and Noctis'.

Ardyn's is basically finished and will be released early next year.

- - - Updated - - -

They actually revealed a teaser trailer for it a few days ago if you're interested.

[eddyak]

So I finally managed to finish the main story of FFXV as well as the party member's DLC episodes. After mulling it over for a few days, I have a final verdict.

Starting with the gameplay, it was literally a game of two halves. The first half of the game with the whole open world was immensely fun. The fact that pretty much every line of dialogue is voiced meant that even doing repetitive fetch quests wasn't boring thanks to the witty dialogue - both from the NPCs and the party members snarking at each other. That said, it is terribly easy to become over-leveled due to the side-quests giving you so much XP as well as the fact that 99% of them are in the first half of the game and so bosses - even the final boss can become ridiculously easy as a result. The various alternate activities such as fishing and Chocobo racing are surprisingly addictive despite how basic most of them are.

Then after a certain point the open world closes off and the game becomes hyper serious in making you focus on the story as it forces you through dungeon after dungeon with the occasional set-piece to try and break it up. It's not bad but it does lack the replayability as well as a bit of an odd choice to frame the game in such a two-tone manner. Overall it was definitely one of my favourite FF games to play in terms of gameplay despite its flaws, while the story I was more mixed on...

Story Discussion

The story is quite a tricky beast to unpack, given the game's long and troubled production history. Some of which were poor business decisions on Square's part but some were genuinely out of their control such as originally planned villain Emperor Aldercapt's voice actor dying partway through leading to them having to re-write the script once again to have Ardyn be the final villain instead. It's not me excusing the flaws, just being sympathetic that problems occur in the creative process.

Anyways, onto the story itself. First and foremost, I really like the world of Eos - the history, the cosmology and even the geography are cool to examine. Even if a lot of it is simply carried over from the other Fabula Nova Crystallis saga but it still manages to stand on its own.

The plot is a solid Hamlet archtype of "Evil Emperor takes the throne from a rightful prince who must go on a journey to reclaim it, learning lessons along the way that will shape him into a more just ruler than had he simply ascended the throne without any trials." There wasn't too many things in the plot that actually surprised me other than the obvious character shafting of certain antagonists due to production issues but more on that later.

The characters are the heart of the game and really carry it through the many hours you spend playing. The brotherhood between the four leading boys feels very natural and thanks to their Character Episodes they were fleshed out individually which sucks that said Episodes were locked behind DLC and really should have been in the base game. That said, Prompto's backstory of being a cloned Magitek Soldier felt very tacked on with very little foreshadowing. Not bad, just very out of left field. The supporting cast are fine and likeable but they all but disappear after the halfway point which is a massive shame - Cor Leonis in particular felt wasted but thankfully he's given much needed spotlight in the Gladio DLC. And now we reach the antagonists, how much you like Ardyn determines how much you'll like the second half of the game as he really has to carry it since all the other villains (Ravus, Drautos and the Emperor) really all got the shaft. Which is a massive shame really.

That said, in a weird sorta way I am glad Ardyn got to be the main villain after the multiple re-writes as he's ultimately the most interesting character by the end of it all. He's Noctis but if things went very wrong and got completely screwed over by both his brother and the Gods. While initially coming off as an insane jester a la Kefka, there's so much more depth to him as a man who saved humanity by taking all of the daemons into himself only to be cast out as a daemon by humanity and now immortal he wanders the land plotting his revenge. If you look at the mural of Noct's ancestors just before the final boss, he'll actually point out that there's a suspicious gap where Ardyn should've been. Hopefully the Ardyn DLC will expand on his character and close off the saga in a satisfactory way since all the other DLC episodes have been cancelled.

To sum up the story, it was a very flawed execution but it was still overall enjoyable. It rather reminded me of a fanmade TM Servant sheet where you can see they've got a good concept but they just can't explain it as well as it exists in their head.

As an aside, I was going to go into nerdy comparison's to every reference and parallel to previous Final Fantasy games but I figured that if anyone cared then they'd already know so I didn't bother.

I decided to wait until the (final) Ardyn DLC episode to 100% the game as to avoid getting oversaturated with the game over so many months as I was feeling the burn by the time I finished the main story.

I agree with basically everything you said. It annoyed me that the second half was so obviously plagued with development issues. It honestly felt as if the second half was just Izalith, all the way through.

Ardyn

Ardyn definitely felt very forced, though. "Here, lemme just go mess with this sixteen year old prince, and instead of killing him, or killing his friends, just help him out a few times, steal his car, waste massive amounts of military forces almost murdering him a couple times, et cetera."

[Spartacus]

I have the exact same opinion about RDR 2.

[Skull]

Ardyn

Ardyn definitely felt very forced, though. "Here, lemme just go mess with this sixteen year old prince, and instead of killing him, or killing his friends, just help him out a few times, steal his car, waste massive amounts of military forces almost murdering him a couple times, et cetera."

My Thoughts

Ardyn's a real weird one as far as antagonists go as at his very most core he simply wants to die - which can only be brought about by Noctis becoming the King of Kings. But at the same time he's consumed with revenge for the Lucis family. So it becomes this paradoxical cat and mouse game of "if he dies at the hands of the empire that's fine I'll just destroy the world...but if he does survive then I'll help guide him to become the King of Kings and give me

Death

peace

". He even points it out in the final boss fight that if he really wanted to, he could have easily killed Noctis when they first met at the harbour, but that wouldn't have satisfied his rage after waiting for 2000 years.

It really says something that during "Episode Ignis" he shows genuine worry for the first time when Ignis uses the Ring as he thinks that Ignis will die only to then become ecstatic when he sees that Ignis has gained the favour of the Kings and they lend him power to save Noctis' life.

Funnily enough, whether it was by some deep desire to still save the world back when he was human or something else, Ardyn was the one who ultimately paved the way to destroying the Starscourge forever by helping Noctis become the Chosen One and bring Providence after he ascended and completely destroying Ardyn's soul forever. So yeah, Ardyn has the rare honour of being one of the few FF villains who actually "won" in a sense.

It still doesn't make him a good person, but it gives him a layer of complexity that say the Emperor ultimately didn't have since y'know his actor died and whatnot.